Polynices
by Eliot Rosewater
Summary: Loki rides the crazy train.


**Kurt Vonnegut wrote in _The Sirens of Titan_, "I tell you, even a half-dead man hates to be alive and not be able to see any sense to it."**

* * *

"Is this justice?"

(_Is it madness?_)

Perhaps. Cruelty, more like. In either case, it's not Loki's.

No, this is Odin's doing. Clever. The old man has always been so clever.

"You want so terribly to be king? Then rot in your castle."

Sentenced to an eternity of incarceration in an abandoned fortress. All possible exits—windows, cracks under doors—sealed. Constructed at the base of the mountains that are so distant from the golden city—the castle is crumbling. It has been around since before Asgard's walls. Legends predating Bor's rule exist about this place. For a people as long-lived as the Æsir, to call something old carries great weight.

This place is more than old. It is decrepit, ancient.

And now this castle is to be Loki's cage. This ruin is to be his throne; ghosts his only subjects. Appointed by the All-father himself, Loki is the lord of broken stones and echoes.

Long live the king.

The wind batters Loki's alcazar. It sings for the keeper of the castle—whistling through the crumbling mortar. There are voices on the wind. Of that Loki is sure. The words do no come from his lips, and there is not another soul in this cage of a castle. It must be the wind. He does not feel the air rushing through the stone halls; the magical seals prohibit anything from getting into or out of the castle. But there is no other way for the voices to reach him if they are not a mere trick played by the wind. There is no one but Loki and legends living here. And neither of them speaks.

The fallen god—the puny god—haunts his own halls.

Like the predator he once thought of himself as, Loki stalks every inch of the cage. Reluctantly and desperately, he memorizes every last bit of it. Without ever pausing, he walks in circles—up and down the cracked steps, through every passage, into every room, into the deepest crevasses below ground—over and over again. His eyes scour every brick. He breathes in the stale air that has lived here—stagnant—for all eternity. His fingertips trail along every surface as he goes, gouging his existence into primordial dust.

As he walks along, one of the broken stones betrays him. It is buried under time, but the stone's ragged edge cuts into the fleshy pad of Loki's index finger. The air in his lungs condenses. His feet cease their motion for the first time in days (weeks? months? years? a lifetime?). There is a little red trail on the stone wall. Loki holds his hand before his face, curious. Blood collects where the skin is broken and ever so slowly falls down the length of his finger.

_There I am_, he thinks. _That's me. _

His breath comes out of his parted lips in a pale cloud. When did it get so cold? Where is he? It is dark now. Is it night? Is he on one of the subterranean levels? Both? Neither? Is this just another illusion created by his mind to spare him the cruelties of reality? It is black as pitch but he can see his weeping hand clear as day.

He is falling.

Loki is falling and his bleeding hand is gone. Shattered light above him—a bridge reaching for stars that are more distant now than they were just a moment ago. The golden city above him is all he can see. It rushes away from him, and it's winking and smiling. That city knows something that Loki is only just now about to find out. The city is warm and shining and _home_ and it reaches its broken arm of shimmering light out to the heavens. He pretends that rainbow of an arm is extending toward him now. It will scoop him out of this rushing nothing and hold him safe in the palm of its hand.

But Loki has been here before and knows that no hand will grab him and pull him back up. There is nothing for him but space. The pulling and pushing dragging him down and in . . . The gravity of the thing pulls him faster than he is able to fall. His skin stretches. His bones wrench free of their sockets. The air is scorching and frozen all at once.

_ not again please not again_

Once he has nowhere else to fall, he stops feeling anything. There is no noise, no more stretching, no more anything. It is only existence—the cruelest part of all. It could have crushed him. It could have rendered his every atom. It could have frozen the life in him, locking him forever in a single moment in time. But none of that happens. He merely exists in this burning cold abyss; hanging by a single stubborn thread. No more falling. How can he? There is no gravity out here. He doesn't feel anything but the scream caught like a bubble in his throat.

As quickly as it came on, it stops. He doesn't realize it at first. Each of his sense comes back to him one at a time. Only after all of this does he feel the ground beneath his feet. (Only after all of this does he feel at all.) Loki opens his eyes even though he didn't realize that he had closed them. The integrity of his legs has been compromised. He falls into the wall and uses it to guide him to the ground.

_Was that real?_

Loki looks about himself and realizes that he isn't where he last thought he was. He is still in the castle, to be sure. But now he is up in the tallest turret. It's completely dark save the sunlight leaking through the arrowslit across from him. He thought he was in the lower levels before. Loki is sure that he had been falling into an abyss seconds ago, but here he is having moved up instead of down. He looks at his hands. The tip of his index finger is perfect and there is no sign of the cut he was sure he had. On the stone wall he's leaning against, Loki doesn't see the channels he's sure his fingers dug into an eon's worth of dust.

_Is this real? Am I truly sitting here, or am I still out there? Is _any _of this real? _

It doesn't matter. He digs his fingers into the stones behind him. His nails bite and scratch at the mortar, but it doesn't give away. Loki doesn't care and keeps digging at the wall. He throws himself at the stones and pounds his hands against the arrowslit. But he can't change anything. His hand can't even reach out of that narrow little window. The force field keeps everything in. Keeps everything out.

Isolated.

He may as well be falling again.

Something frighteningly close to panic grips his stomach.

Nothing can make him see reason. Loki kicks and punches at the walls of the turret. He screams and hurls his tired magic at the cracks between the stones. He claws at the walls until his nails shear off and his fingertips bleed. All he can think is that he needs to escape. He can't sit here. He can't stay locked up here until they come for him—and they _will_ come for him. Odin would lock him up like a prize. Lock him up like a stolen relic only to be used when there is something to be gained.

Loki screams and slams his back against the wall that is streaked with his blood. _There I am. That's me_.

"I cannot stay here!" he shouts. "Let me out, you beast! I have to leave! I cannot stay! He will come to Asgard if I stay! You must release me!"

No one but the ghosts hear him.

Loki cracks his head against the stones and mutters, "I cannot stay here." Over and over he does this, alternating blows to the head with his mantra. Before long his hair is sticky with blood and his vision swims.

(_Until Odin awakens, Asgard is yours_.)

"You have no right," he slurs. "You have no right to keep me here. This is no way to treat a king. I've done nothing but what I had to in order to stay alive. You are all of you beneath me. Betrayers, every last one. You spend your entire lives doing battle, and you think you know honor. Where is the honor in war? Where is the honor in orphaning children? Where is the honor in lying and deceit? Where is the honor in betraying your rightful king? Well, where is it? Tell me. _Tell me!_"

But no one answers.

"None of it was wrong," he says to his trembling hands. He feels defensive but he doesn't know who he's trying to convince of his innocence. "Asgard was _mine_ and none of it was wrong . . . I don't belong in here."

Wind whistles through the bloodied slit of a window above him.

(_Know your place, Brother._)

He screams, "I don't belong in a cell!"

The words 'I don't belong' echo through the castle but the rest of the sentence is lost. Perhaps the ghosts speak after all. Over and over again his voice drifts back to him. _I don't belong_. It doesn't quiet down or die off. Instead, Loki's own words hang like storm clouds over his head and drench him in doubt.

_Don't belong . . . You've never belonged_, the ghosts say. _Least loved; second best. _

Loki's blood is boiling—it is searing under his skin. He could spit acid if he had a mind to. When he curls his hands into fists, his nail-free, raw-nerved fingers sing in protest. Odin. They call him wise, but he is a fool. And they are bigger fools than he for failing to realize it. Odin is but an old, cruel man. If Loki is selfish, then Odin is downright greedy, immoral. He would play political games with an infant's life! If Odin had always meant to bring about permanent peace with Jötunheim through Loki, then wouldn't it have made sense to raise him knowing it?

What sort of man takes in a child and raises it on stories of its own race's monstrosity? What exactly had the _All-father_ thought would happen when Loki was finally made privy to the truth? If Loki wasn't meant to find out the truth in the way he had, how _was_ Odin planning on telling him? By simply summoning him to the throne room after Laufey's death and saying, 'I stole you as an infant so that I may have a political tool with which to end hostilities with Jötunheim—you know, the realm that I told you was filled with monstrous savages. I myself hunted them to near-extinction so that they wouldn't have enough power to rally against me and my army. You are a monster too—you've been one your entire life, didn't you know? Now would you please leave here and go rule that dark and desolate world of which you have no knowledge?'

The idiot. The _idiot_! If Loki had just known! If Odin had never given him anything, then there would have been nothing to ruin when he finally discovered the truth. Odin gave Loki just enough to make him crave more—to make him _want_ Odin's approval. Odin gave him a privileged life, the resources to pursue magic, the ability to sharpen his body and his mind. More than any of that, Odin gave Loki a family that he lov— . . .

He took it all away! It is twisted. Twisted and sick and _Loki_ is the villain.

"Look what you've done to me!" he shrieks.

_Don't belong_, the ghosts say.

_Look what you've done_, the ghosts say.

Bolting drunkenly to his feet, Loki flees the turret. The ghosts echo his own words back to him as he stumbles down the tall spiral steps. It is dark here and his vision still swims from all the time he spent smashing the back of his head into the stones. The echoes seem louder, as if they're chasing him, as if they're only a step behind him now.

_Don't belong._

_ Look what you've done_.

Loki pitches himself over the railing. As the ground rises up to meet him, he is relieved to be falling where he can see where he'll land, and he hopes that it hurts when he does. There is impact and splintering. He sees blood leak out of him—his body has as many cracks as his mind now.

_There I am. That's me. _

Then darkness.

* * *

(_Do the Frost Giants still live?_)

A child's voice greets him. Loki makes to lift his head off the blood-stained stones only to realize that he is not lying in a broken heap. He is in the chambers that he used to call his own. He is in the palace. How he came to be here does not cross Loki's mind. He turns on the spot, surveying the space.

It is different. It is wrong.

"Do the Frost Giants still live?" The child's voice again.

Loki turns toward the sound, spotting the source. Perched up near the ceiling is Loki. A child. The past. And his child-self is expecting an answer. Loki looks at himself, mesmerized. This, for certain, is not reality. But it feels so familiar. His brain is telling him that this has happened before, but surely it can't have.

Loki's child-self drifts down from the ceiling and approaches. "Well, do they?"

"Why wouldn't they?" Loki says.

"You meant to kill them. Did you succeed? Did you kill all the monsters?"

"Not all of them."

The child looks disappointed. He moves away. Loki cannot follow him even if he wants to. Words press at the back of his throat, begging for voice. Try as he might to suppress them, Loki's mouth says without the permission of his brain, "Wait."

The child pauses.

Loki says, "Do the Frost Giants still live?"

Youthful body turns to face him. At first Loki isn't sure that this is the same child as a moment ago. It is a tiny little Jötunn. It stares at him with scarlet irises and cerulean skin, an inverse Thor.

_There I am. That's me._

The Jötunn says, "Yes."

A shriek suddenly fills every corner of the chamber. Loki flinches and claps his hands over his ears. The little Jötunn child looks unfazed.

"What is that?" Loki says when the noise subsides.

"Us."

"Us?"

"You."

* * *

The black lifts as a curtain being swept open. He thinks he is in the abyss again. He knows it from the burning cold. He knows it because he is sensing absolutely nothing but still feeling everything. Hot and cold, stretched and compressed, contentedness and nothingness, dead and alive, peace and turmoil, righteousness and regret. Everything within him is desperate for release, but he fears what will happen if he lets it all go.

Something reaches him. A hand. It clenches around his shoulder and yanks him. Loki's breath catches in his throat, and he realizes that there is no breath there at all. No, there is only liquid so cold it scorches in his lungs. This isn't right. The darkness was never wet.

And then his head breaks the surface of . . . _something_. Water. He was underwater. How in the world did he come to be underwater? Loki rolls away from the grip that is still tight on his shoulder and spits torrent after torrent of water from his lungs. Coughs rack his body and the air teases him. Something hits him in the back, forcing even more fluid out of his chest.

"_Easy now._"

Rough hands move him into a sitting position, face downturned. Loki ejects more water. He imagines himself doing this forever—dispelling water until there's nothing left but a pile of dry cells.

"_I've been through too much trouble for you to go dying on me like that._"

(_I thought you dead._

_ Did you mourn?_)

Thor. It is _Thor_.

(_I missed you too._)

Loki manages to make a sound that communicates his question. _What?_

Thor manages to stand the two of them up. His hands stay closed in tight fists on Loki's shoulders, and he supports most of their combined weight. The emotion is Thor's eyes is foreign to Loki. Unfamiliar but comforting. Forgotten but welcome.

_"What good is it having you locked up? You're not of any use to me in there."_ Loki hears the voice but Thor's lips aren't moving.

_What?_

Thor laughs in a very un-Thorlike manner without opening his mouth. It is harsh and biting. It sounds like Loki. "_Come now, you can't be that dense. Lost more than a few brain cells in there, have you?_"

In where? Loki looks down to their feet. It's dark wherever they are, but not in a nighttime sort of way. It's dark as if they're under the bed fighting their imaginations. As if they're in a shadow. There is snow and ice. Thor pulled him up from under a frozen lake.

It is so cold.

"You . . . saved? Me. R-rescued me? From. The castle." Speech feels clumsy on Loki's tongue and the words come out malformed, deep, and rough. He almost chokes on them. His lips won't obey and he nearly bites his tongue off.

Thor smiles. The sincerity of it. The _sentiment_. His eyes go soft. Loki remembers how telling Thor's eyes are. They can change from calming seas to sharp chips of ice in a single bat of those blond eyelashes. Loki thinks Thor's face carries something very close to concern on it. He hesitates—Thor never hesitates—but eventually puts a very solid and warm hand on the back on Loki's neck. Thor holds him there in a firm grip as if afraid that Loki will try to escape. Soft blue eyes search Loki's face for something. If he knew what Thor is looking for, Loki might help him find it—might offer it willingly. But he doesn't know want he wants. Loki thinks of how easy it would be for Thor to snap his liar's neck.

Thor keeps searching and Loki hears the voice as if Thor's projecting thoughts right into his head instead of speaking. "_What are you saying? Are you surprised? I've already told you that you're no good to me rotting in a case. A trophy ought to be somewhere where people can see it._"

_What?_

(_When I'm king, I'll hunt the monsters down and slay them all. Just like you did, Father._)

Oh. _Oh_.

Loki stumbles back out of Thor's grip.

Oh.

He takes another step away. Thor's face draws in confusion, in hurt. In worry. He opens his mouth as if to speak but no words rent the air. Instead, Loki hears Thor's voice echo in his head. "_Get running, little Giant. Don't you know how a hunt works?_"

Loki takes several more steps away from Thor. The two of them wear matching looks of confusion. The words in Loki's head don't match Thor's behavior. He hears threats and senses danger, but Thor has made no move to harm him. Is he waiting for Loki to run first? Does he want to make a sport of it? Perhaps the words he hears aren't Thor's at all. Maybe it's a trick. Maybe it's madness. Could it be that Loki's never really heard Thor at all—that it's all been some wicked warping of reality?

(_At least make it a challenge for me._)

Loki runs. He runs and he doesn't dare look back to see the hurt and confusion he knows will be on Thor's face. Loki runs until everything blurs together. Ghosts and unreliable memories scream in his wake. Corpses rise from their beds of dirt, pointing rotted fingers at him. Parents cry for the children he took from them, children for their parents. Buildings fall and smother out all those infinite lives that were being lived moments ago. Homes and lives destroyed. Crying, so much crying. His feet bleed over broken glass and upset concrete. His eyes weep for reasons he can't even begin to understand. He is so concerned with running and staying alive at any cost that he doesn't realize that he's run back (forward? laterally?) in time.

He runs by a scene of Thor holding another version of Loki on the balcony of a garish tower.

(_Look at this! Look around you. You think this madness will end with your rule?_

_ It's too late. It's too late to stop it._)

He wishes he could—he had—he will. He wishes that it never came to this.

Loki sees himself draw a knife and bury it where it doesn't belong. He hates himself. He hates himself for falling apart. Loki sees himself stabbing his brother and he screams. He doesn't know what is right or wrong anymore. All Loki knows is what is life and what is death.

He runs away from it. He runs back, forwards, left, right, wrong—he runs in every direction that is _away_. He runs into the sky and sees himself in a cage he could easily escape. Loki sees the spider thinking she's playing him. He sees himself thinking he's playing her. He hears his own voice fill his ears. This iteration of Loki looks at the spider but is really speaking to himself.

(_You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that makes up for the horrors. But they are a part of you and they will never go away_.)

Bile is building up at the back of his throat. Even then he knew. A part of him has known the whole time. A part of him has been locked inside this hardened shell since the very first word. That tiny bit of clarity, lucidity—his sanity . . . it has been bound and gagged inside him, prisoner to his selfish survival instincts, his madness. It was banging on his dormant conscience all along. It was begging for him to _see. _It is killing itself trying to find its way out of the impenetrable fortress it's been locked in.

Loki screams. He runs. He leaves the spider behind—he is jealous of her. He only wishes he could run fast enough to leave himself behind too.

He runs until he sees Thor again. The two of them are in that godforsaken forest. That could have been it; the end. Everything could have stopped there.

(_Who controls the would-be king?_)

"Why didn't you ask again?" Loki shrieks at the vision of the past—the future, an alternate reality. He watches himself spit empty words at Thor. Misdirection, a change of subject. Loki watches Thor fall for it. He shouts to deaf ears, "Why didn't you ever ask me again? Why didn't you demand an answer? Surely you knew I wasn't acting alone! Why didn't you force the answer out of me? Why didn't you make me tell? Why didn't you _help me!_"

He screams. He runs. He cries. He weeps. He feels.

Loki flees until his feet bring him to a wasteland far afield, the bowels of existence. He hates it but he deserves it.

(_You will have your war, Asgardian._)

He screams.

(_A wise king never seeks out war._)

He screams.

(_Who said I was wise?_)

He screams.

(_Both of you were born to be kings._)

He screams.

(_The throne would suit you ill._)

He screams.

(_Really, how do I look? _

_ Like a king._)

He screams.

(_I was a king! The rightful king of Asgard. Betrayed._)

He screams.

(_I never wanted the throne._)

Loki screams.

He stops running and clamps his hands on either side of his pounding head—the echoes throwing themselves violently against the inside of his skull. The weight of everything fills up his head till it's about to break. Loki screws his eyes closed and screams. Tears fall unendingly from his eyes and he doesn't know _why_. The ghosts surround him, keeping him there now that they've finally caught up to him.

"Loki."

The voice is loud though it is not shouting. He allows himself a breath. Another. Loki looks up. Every second passes painfully, slowly. Thor reaches a hand out toward Loki. It's as if he is trying to soothe a frightened animal, a _cornered_ animal. Loki is confident that Thor means no harm in the gesture, but Loki's feet make him retreat a step anyway. Thor holds his hands up as if in surrender (cold laughter ricochets around inside Loki's skull).

Loki holds his ground as Thor approaches, arms still held in surrender and displaying his lack of weapons. Thor nods to the surface they stand on. Loki looks down to realize that he's standing on thin ice filled with cracks spreading like spiders' legs in all directions. Through the ice Loki can see unending stars and galaxies. He looks back up to Thor in alarm.

_not again_

Thor speaks.

And the ice shatters like a rainbow. Thor lunges for Loki; Asgard framed behind him as if it has been there all along. Hand gripped tight around Loki's vambrace, Thor's eyes are frantic. Loki hangs above the abyss again. His eyes are reluctant to look away from it. Every instinct in him is screaming at him to escape. Loki makes himself look at Thor—his only lifeline. Thor tries to haul Loki back to safety, but too much weight hangs down—the more Thor strains against it, the more cracks that form in the ice under him and the more _both_ of them slip downward.

(_You are coming with me, aren't you?_)

Loki looks at Thor and tries so hard to force those words past his lips, but his body won't cooperate. Thor can see the intent in Loki's eyes anyway. He shakes his head in denial. He tries to tell Loki _no_.

(_Never doubt that I love you_.)

Loki cuts himself free from his vambrace and falls off the edge of the world before Thor does too.

He screams.

And it's all he does for a long time. Sitting up in that turret as the sun cycles through the arrowslit, Loki screams to remind himself that he's real. Wherever he is, he is alive. He wishes he couldn't hear his voice bouncing back on him. Loki screams in case he really is out in the abyss. In case he isn't. He screams in case he won't be able to later. Fingers knotting in his hair and eyes closing tight, Loki forces all the air in his lungs violently past his vocal chords until it hurts to breathe. His voice cracks and he stops his shouting. He listens.

Rumbling. Like boulders colliding.

Loki looks to the arrowslit. No light is coming in—nighttime. There are not even stars (thank the Norns). He hears it again. Tearing, then rumbling, as if reality itself were being shredded in the face of something more powerful. Loki's throat constricts on another scream. A blindingly bright flash of blue explodes directly outside the arrowslit window. And then a voice.

(_What's the matter, scared of a little lightning?_)

Loki laughs, dares to hope. Hysteria ensues.

(_I'm not overly fond of what follows._)

He is screaming.

That deep, lined, unnaturally-colored face is speaking. It is taunting. That monster that does its bidding lurks on the fringes. Loki knows the Titan before him is speaking in veiled threats, but he can't make himself care. Loki has been here before. He is standing before the Titan as he has so many times before.

The Other speaks words that Loki already knows, "Wherever you go, Asgardian, he will know. Everything you see is because he lets you. Remember this: When you see the sun rise on another day, when you see the stars at night, when you look upon the world of which you call yourself king, let it be a reminder that it is because he wishes it. Until your promise if fulfilled, you belong to him."

Thanos stops talking and looks directly into Loki, directly _through_ Loki.

Loki is screaming.

The pain—it is staggering. It is nothing new. It has happened before. But that doesn't make it any easier to experience. Whatever his body feels, it is nothing compared to his mind being torn asunder. The Titan laughs at what he sees. Loki has long since passed feeling insults. Before Thanos, he has no dignity to look out for. There is no reputation to protect. He would see through it anyway. There is nothing Loki can do to thwart the Titan when he pursues something he wants. If there is anything Loki knows, it is that.

So he screams.

But he never begs for Thanos to stop. He never asks for an end to come about. After he had been pulled from the abyss and during the first few encounters Loki had with Thanos, he called for help, for a savior, for a chance to do it all differently. Loki called for Thor—_cried_ for him—shouted apologies and lamented his impulsive mistakes. But no hero ever came to rescue him. So Loki stopped calling for one. He convinced himself that this is what he wants anyway—that he and Thanos have some common ground. He willingly surrendered his freedom and what was left of his sanity to the Titan. It was easier than asking for help.

This is the price Loki must pay. For knowledge, he must know suffering. For peace, he must know pain. For life, he must bring Death. As penance, he must never forgive himself.

If _this_ is what it takes for Loki to go on breathing, then it's worth it, isn't it?

(_You lack conviction._)

He is screaming because he doesn't know what he wants anymore.

Loki doesn't know when he is.

Is _this_ reality? Is he still in the service of a monster more ruthless than himself? Has the Titan summoned him from Odin's cage? (Was he ever really in the crumbling castle?) Has the Titan bent time around him again, making everything stretch in excruciating slowness? Loki thinks again that the castle might just be an illusion that his fractured mind created as a refuge. A refuge from Thanos's attacks or the unending existence of the abyss? Who knows? Loki surely doesn't.

If he could be anywhere in the universe, Loki would be nowhere.

He would forget everything he's seen and learned because of Thanos to be free of this. Loki wouldn't even ask for his sanity back. He wants only to be gone from here. It had seemed like such an improvement at the time. The abyss had unmade him. Took his cracked mind and pried it open along the fault lines, making it all the easier for Thanos to play around inside. It had seemed better to enter into an agreement with the Mad Titan than to go on living the rest of his life as an experiment, broken and unwanted—cast out.

From turmoil came absolute destruction.

Loki feels nauseated when he thinks that perhaps what he became after he fell wasn't an improvement at all. He looks at the Mad Titan and sees himself. He sees a mess of corpses. He sees waste laid upon harmless worlds. He sees betrayal. He sees everything he thought he'd done for the better as what it was. He sees selfishness, which he knew was always there. He sees flawed judgment. He sees innocents—children—living in desolation, reaping the sins of their fathers. He sees impulse that led to ruin. He sees death.

Thanos reaches a massive hand toward Loki, stony face transformed in the presence of a devilish grin. Loki's heart attempts to crawl out of his throat.

He is screaming.

**_I'M SORRY._**

(_You are incapable of sincerity._)

A crash of thunder and Loki is somewhere else.

* * *

**Note:**

**Italicized portions in parentheses are quotes from either _Thor_ or _The Avengers_.**


End file.
